Iris
by reminiscent-afterthought
Summary: The only thing her eyes were good for were the tears starting to form at their edges. Pre-season fic.


Author's Notes

To be honest, I'm not sure whether Yin really is blind. The anime seems to offer both possibilities. But this one-shot is based on the assumption that she _is_ blind, and it is a fairly common consensus, so I'll just go along with that. I suppose it didn't really matter once she became a doll; her spirits could see for her. But the two episodes in the first season showing Kirsi have always intrigued me.

I've never actually written a Darker than Black fic before. Closest I've gotten is a pseudo-cross, so this is a bit of an experiment with me.

Enjoy, and tell me what you think.

* * *

><p><span>Iris<span>

The only thing her eyes were good for were the tears starting to form at their edges. Pre-season fic.

Yin/Kirsi

Genre/s: Family/Tragedy

* * *

><p>As a baby, she rarely cried. An angelic, sweet child, following her cooing voice even if she could not see the source. Her pale irises simply reflected that light.<p>

As a mother, her mother, she was somewhat saddened by that. Her daughter would not be able to see the world they took for granted every day. But Kirsi was strong, she was proud to say; her maternal pride. Her daughter grew with her disability. She learned to sense the world around her without being hindered by what she saw, or rather, did not see.

She never really understood, what exactly it was her daughter could see. The doctor claimed it was transitions in light; she was especially reactive to the gentle moonlight that seeped through their large windows, unhampered by curtains of any artificial lighting. She seemed to like it too, closing her eyes and simply basking in the tender glow, hands frozen over the piano board as she grew older and honed her skill. There was something special about that light.

Without sight, other senses became more important tools. Sound, taste, feeling…that was how she saw the world. Her mother watched her grow, but at the same time, she watched herself grow apart. With a daughter, without her husband, her child's father, always at work, flying oversees and interstate and sending money over to support them every other month, but she hadn't seen him in person for more than a year.

Kirsi learned from a famous pianist, one of the best in the country: Elis Kastinen. Without her father, she leaned towards the kind teacher, complaining like she would with any person she was comfortable in the presence off, smiling in that serene way of hers, letting her fingers dance on the piano…though over the ears, she became somewhat more distant from him, from them.

She watched them from the couch. Initially, it was a purely parent-teacher relationship. But she found that she was being gradually drawn to the kind man. Little things, like hands touching, eyes meeting, a faint blush rising…and realising he was there for them even more than her husband was.

Somewhere along the line, she fell in love. She didn't know how; love knew no bounds after all. Her husband still lived, but he was far from her, physically, and travelling father away emotionally as he failed to uphold his promises and return day after day. She knew though, that she was still married to him, still tied to him. And despite how far he was from her, she still loved him too.

Eventually, she got the call. Her husband – no, late husband, had died in a plane crash. The phone fell from her hands in an instinctive reaction as she fell forward, crying. The two halves of her heart had been freed, but this wasn't what she had wanted. She turned slightly, hearing the noise by the door, seeing Yin standing there, in her pale blue pyjamas. 'Mama?' she asked, as though a part of her had detected the reason for the cries she heard. 'What is it?'

'It's Papa,' the woman said, holding out her arms as the girl came closer, like she had expected her to. She wrapped her arms around her, bringing the child close to her bosom like only a mother could. 'He's dead.'

They shared those tears together.

They mourned for a while. For her, there were two degrees. The death of a husband, and a sense of misplaced guilt, that her love for him had been divided. But it had mattered not. Elis still came, his strong yet gentle hands guiding the younger Kirsi's ones over the piano, gently coaxing a higher order of feeling and strength into them, offering his comfort in any way he could.

In the end, her barriers all but broken, she reached out to him…only to find Kirsi at the door.

Often, she wondered, exactly how she saw. Having the gift of sight herself, she could never fully understand how it was to see the world without it. Feeling was more than physical touch, she realised, seeing her daughter's somewhat betrayed expression. _And we have betrayed her_, her mother thought. _I have torn her image of her parents apart_.

She jerked away suddenly, barely seeing the other's hurt expression as her daughter run and fled.

'Kirsi,' she shouted. 'No! Come back!'

The girl didn't, so she ran after her.

At that point nothing mattered, except her daughter. She was filled with a sudden sense of dread; Elis didn't matter. Her deceased husband didn't matter. Only her daughter, whom she had borne in her womb for nine months, mattered at that stage. It was that love that was more powerful than anything. She would give it all away, if it meant keeping her daughter.

'Kirsi!' she shouted again, as her bare feet felt the ground beneath her. They were both outside now. 'Stop!'

She did stop, but not because of her shout, or perhaps so. Or perhaps she had heard the large truck approaching. But she didn't not move towards safety. Instead, she stood, frozen in time as the lights washed over her.

She made a split second decision which cost her life, pushing her daughter out of the way of that truck.

She heard the cry of 'Mama' as she fell. A cry laced with many emotions, most of which she failed to identify, but she sensed guilt, and sorrow…and love. But there was no anger. No hatred.

The special light disappeared that day. Only tears fell from those pale eyes beside her stone coffin.


End file.
